Xiao-Fei Yang

Xiao-Fei Yang, PhD, is an affective and developmental neuroscientist with extensive experience working with youths and in schools. She is passionate about contributing to the scientific knowledge that could improve students and teachers’ experiences and transform schools and education policies for a more equitable society. 

Her research focuses on the psychological and neurobiological processes supporting complex emotions and meaning making about the social world, as well as the development of these processes in sociocultural contexts, especially during adolescence. She specializes in neuroimaging and psychophysiology and utilizes a mixed-method approach relating qualitative analyses of natural behavior to measures of brain functioning and body regulation.

Yang earned a B.S. in Biology from Fudan University in Shanghai, China, and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from USC.

• *Gotlieb, R., *Yang, X.-F. & Immordino-Yang, M.H. Diverse adolescents’ transcendent thinking predicts young adult psychosocial outcomes via brain network development. Sci Rep 14, 6254 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-56800-0 *RG and X-FY contributed equally to this work.
• Yang, X.-F., Hilliard, K., Gotlieb, R., & Immordino-Yang, M. H. (2024). Transcendent thinking counteracts longitudinal effects of mid-adolescent exposure to community violence in the anterior cingulate cortex. Journal of Research on Adolescence. https://doi.org/10.1111/jora.12993
• Riveros, R., Yang, X.-F., Gonzalez Anaya, M. J., & Immordino-Yang, M. H. (2024). Sages and Seekers: The development of diverse adolescents’ transcendent thinking and purpose through an intergenerational storytelling program. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 19(5), 849–861. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2023.2282774
• Gotlieb, R. J. M., Yang, X.-F., & Immordino-Yang, M. H. (2022). Concrete and abstract dimensions of diverse adolescents’ social-emotional meaning-making, and associations with broader functioning. Journal of Adolescent Research. https://doi.org/10.1177/07435584221091498
• Gotlieb, R., Yang, X.-F., Immordino-Yang, M.H. (2022). Default and executive networks’ roles in diverse adolescents’ emotionally engaged construals of complex social issues. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 17(4), 421–429.https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsab108
• Gotlieb, R., Yang, X.-F., Immordino-Yang, M.H., (2021). Measuring Learning in the Blink of an Eye: Adolescents’ Neurophysiological Reactions Predict Long-Term Memory for Stories. Front. Educ. 5:594668. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2020.594668
• Dénervaud, S., Fornari, E., Yang, X.-F., Hagmann, P., Sander, D., Immordino-Yang, M.H. (2020). Error-monitoring is influenced by school pedagogy: fMRI evidence from Montessori and traditional schoolchildren. Nature Learning Science, 5(11), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41539-020-0069-6
• *Yang, X.-F., *Pavarini, G., Schnall, S. & Immordino-Yang, M.H. (2018). Looking up to virtue: Averted gaze facilitates moral construals via posteromedial cortical activations. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 13(11), 1131-1139. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsy081 *GP and X-FY contributed equally to this work.
• Butler, O., Yang, X.-F. & Immordino-Yang, M.H. (2018). Community violence exposure correlates with smaller gray matter volume and lower IQ in urban adolescents. Human Brain Mapping, 39(5), 2088–2097. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.23988
• Yang, X.-F., Immordino-Yang, M.H. (2017). Cultural group and cardiac vagal tone independently influence emotional expressiveness. Culture and Brain 5:36-49. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40167-017-0048-9
• Immordino-Yang, M.H. & Yang, X.-F. (2017, invited submission) Cultural differences in the neural correlates of social-emotion experiences: An interdisciplinary, developmental perspective. Current Opinion in Psychology, Special Issue on Emotion edited by L. Feldman Barrett and B. Mesquita, 17, 34-40.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.06.008
• Immordino-Yang, M.H., Yang, X.-F., Damasio, H. (2016). Cultural modes of expressing emotions influence how emotions are experienced. Emotion 16(7)1033-1039. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000201
• Immordino-Yang, M.H., Yang, X.-F., Damasio, H. (2014). Correlations between social-emotional feelings and anterior insula activity are independent from visceral states but influenced by culture. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 8, 728. https://doi.org/10.3389/ fnhum.2014.00728
• Yang X.-F., Bossmann J., Schiffhauer B., Jordan M. & Immordino-Yang M. H. (2013). Intrinsic default mode network connectivity predicts spontaneous verbal descriptions of autobiographical memories during social processing. Front. Psychology 3, 592. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00592
• Saxbe, D. E., Yang, X.-F., Borofsky, L. A. & Immordino-Yang, M. H. (2013). Embodiment of emotion: Language use during the feeling of social emotions predicts cortical somatosensory activity. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 8(7),806-812. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nss075